Buddy Guy is not an old fashioned bluesman !

This is a punkier, rockier bluesman than the present generation, who knows how to bring the blues to a white audience. Old fashioned? The accusation wouldn't offend Buddy Guy, who's just playing his guitar right. Here, the guitarist is discussing the blues with guests who have the stature to hold a conversation with him. Keith Richards and Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, Jeff Beck and James Bay feed his talent, and stay in perfect harmony with his genius. And what would be blues without talk of booze and old friends? On Cognac, Buddy Guy seems to shed twenty years when he evokes Muddy Waters. It's too late to sip a brandy with him, but now he's got Keith and others for company. Getting wasted in style, filling up on booze and the blues, dealing out a hand that can't ever end: that's the spirit of the blues. Beyond the music, there is a real discussion that starts between guitar riffs, piano chords and the singer's penetrating voice. Better than a trance, this is a stairway to the underworld opening up. And then there's such a captivating groove on {The Blues Is Alive And Well }. It's a grand declaration of love for the genre, which, through solitude, poverty and suffering, remains a faithful friend, a life-saver, an intimate journal. Perhaps the album should be seen as a kind of passing-onward of the blues to the generations to come. Blue No More gives a fair account of the idea. It's a duet where Buddy Guy is singing face-to-face with the Pearly Gates. It doesn't dampen his mood at all, through, because he knows that others down below will pick up his baton. And James Bay echoes his master's words back to him: "I won’t be blue no more".

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